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Such terrible misinformation from speculation in the other replies. Peking is not that much closer to the Cantonese pronunciation (see the voice sample in https

Such terrible misinformation from speculation in the other replies. Peking is not that much closer to the Cantonese pronunciation (see the voice sample in https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8C%97%E4%BA%AC https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8C%97%E4%BA%AC). Nor is it Wade–Giles, which would romanize it as Pei-ching. Just look up the word's well-sourced etymology in Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Peking#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Peking#Etymology): the name comes from Mandarin after Mandarin dropped final -k, -p, -t (which are preserved in Cantonese) but before Mandarin palatalized ki > ji. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_postal_romanization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_postal_romanization. The initial consonant being p- is also expected, since it is closer to the unaspirated p in most European languages than to b-; the Pinyin p- then corresponds to aspirated p.

onethought 4y ago
It’s not misinformation. You are basically saying it’s from mandarin back when mandarin was a lot more like Cantonese. It is very easy to hear the similarities between bak ging and Peking… clearly they are related, exactly the same mouth tongue and aspiration. But sure, it’s from mandarin back when mandarin pronounced it just like the Cantonese do :) not from Cantonese at all.
- jhanschoo 4y ago
  It's also very easy to hear the similarities between Peking and Mandarin... clearly they are related in every aspect except for k > j Whereas for Cantonese, there's difference in vowel quality and the final -k of 北. It wouldn't be misinformation if Mandarin indeed used to be pronounced similar to Cantonese... but that's just not true since earlier Mandarin never had -a- for the vowel of 北; it was an innovation in several southern Chinese languages. At best we can say that they used to be pronounced like their Middle Chinese ancestors.

onethought 4y ago

It’s not misinformation. You are basically saying it’s from mandarin back when mandarin was a lot more like Cantonese. It is very easy to hear the similarities between bak ging and Peking… clearly they are related, exactly the same mouth tongue and aspiration. But sure, it’s from mandarin back when mandarin pronounced it just like the Cantonese do :) not from Cantonese at all.

jhanschoo 4y ago
It's also very easy to hear the similarities between Peking and Mandarin... clearly they are related in every aspect except for k > j Whereas for Cantonese, there's difference in vowel quality and the final -k of 北. It wouldn't be misinformation if Mandarin indeed used to be pronounced similar to Cantonese... but that's just not true since earlier Mandarin never had -a- for the vowel of 北; it was an innovation in several southern Chinese languages. At best we can say that they used to be pronounced like their Middle Chinese ancestors.